


duel links 2 except you can read it separately and kaiba just plays love live

by ruruka



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, Post canon, obligatory my fav plays idol games fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 04:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19191742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka





	duel links 2 except you can read it separately and kaiba just plays love live

Nights are blue in the hiemal shelter of Kaiba Seto’s bedroom.

Blue, not in the drips of melancholy that run down legs plagued and fatigued. Blue not in worry. The very tips of the hearth and the gleam of an iris gold rimmed.

It’s a breezeless evening beyond the curtains, taut together at the center, matching finely the mahogany trim of every turn. He’s perfectly content here, halfway lost beneath the sheets. Because there’s always a hand to bring the surface into sight and pat the water from his lungs.

For the moment, it rests strong and bare against the indentations of warmth the comforter has mapped, two thighs and knees and shins and feet all ivory thin, no moonlight nor shadow of creeping hall lamp. Everything is sealed here. Not a tomb. A cavern, at most, and he, the dragon’s hoard.

“I still can’t believe you never told me anything about this…” is only lowly murmured by Yuugi and his lush peppermint colored breath. Chipped black polish decorates the thumbnail that scrolls along his phone screen’s idle glow. More than all he’s mesmerized by everything about the application and its graphics, design, amenities, beta version only aside, and the fact that beneath his nose it’s all been in the works. God knows how long. Kaiba’s a deliciously crafty one, yet to build such an intricate world as this within his palm- _DUEL LIIIINKS._ Yuugi’s ears ring still with it, well past the loading page. Crafty.

“And you haven’t told those friends of yours that you spend every night in my bed,” comes from beside him, too hesitant to be _sudden,_ though distraction’s perked his nerves to pinch at the new voice still; and when he looks at Kaiba, a swift swing of the eyes to his right side, there sits nothing in that face but looming conquest.

Yuugi notes, as he’s sure to, how carefully a term as _dating_ has been walked far around. The pieces of his brain that form honesty are thankful for it, even if the most romantic bits wonder what if.

“That’s different,” his voice is soft to laugh, and attention floats back toward the game ahead if only to be soothed in divergence. Chiffon mumbles around his shifting ankles. As his mind comes to rest more further, he’s able to discern among the striking graphics and cracks in his screen that a notification has entered the arena at his phone’s very top, one he blinks to intake. “Oh.”

Noted go the motions to the right of the bed, the focus that suctions to him newly to watch as his device tilts upon its side to fit tightly within the cold of bantam hands.

A cutesy voice chimes out the company logo printed on the screen. Kaiba’s brows lower.

“You close my game to go to this one…” His tone perches upon sour, gnawing. “What the hell is this supposed to be?”

Though there hardly lives a gleam of light in their room, Kaiba’s palpable revulsion dances hotly in Yuugi’s line of sight, yet even more so can he smell the curiosity. Interest.

“It’s just a rhythm game. I got a notification that my LP bar was full.” Impatient hands tap in haste through the loading screens. “It’s called Love Live. ...Anzu got me a little bit addicted to it. It’s kind of like DDR, but for your fingers.”

“I know what a rhythm game is,” Kaiba barks back. Though he sneers, he and his soft bedtime self do not bother hiding a stare over Yuugi’s shoulder. Screen light billows on two faces. Yuugi moves to flick across the rainbow of buttons. Kaiba moves quicker.

“Hey-! Do you want to play..?” Emptied hands shift him, now the forced spectator to poke his nose toward the phone dominated by new hold. “Don’t do anything in the event, please. I’m really close to getting the new Kotori SR.”

“You expect me to understand anything you say,” Kaiba flatly states, voice doing the work of relaying rolled eyes. He manages his way toward the song selection menu, flipping around a blind moment until guidance chooses for him.

The first moments, they sit quietly within the warm indent of the sheet, something primal crippling Kaiba’s hands to stark stone. Yuugi could swear every last pulse of heart is audible there, waiting for the song to begin beneath two rigid thumbs. And the first note hits- and Kaiba strikes.

_BAD_

“Slower,” Yuugi suggests, leaning to higher a view.

Despite a snarl, the coaching is heeded for the following notes that all berate him in rapid succession. _13 Combo. GOOD. 1 Combo. MISS. MISS._

Hearing the desperation in the little voice that melts from the speakers makes Yuugi cringe upon himself and the two tense shoulders he rests his grip on.

“Maybe try a lower difficulty? Sorry, I should have thought of that. I always have it set to Expert by default.”

“Right, bragging is just what I need to hear,” blows from the flare in Kaiba’s core. One failure means nothing to him. So harshly shall he rectify, there’ll be not a single soul left who could recall the day Kaiba Seto faced anything but auspicious golden triumph.

A jerk of the torso draws him facing the wall. Yuugi stretches a lonesome little smile, reaching forward a hand to rub circles in the tight, broad back now toward him.

“Plug my phone in when you’re done, please,” lilts just before a kiss to a screen lit cheek. “Goodnight.”

No matter how delightfully he rests to the quiet melodies and thumb pad presses, the heat radiating from where he buries his face in the other’s shoulder- Yuugi wishes, once he’s woken alone, that he’d never fallen asleep.

A finger poked within the curtains tells him it hasn’t yet reached the crest of morning. It’s dark, and he’s cold in boxers and a department store boy’s section tee, prancing around the carpet to tug a drawstring at his waist before choosing to venture from the room. Just across the hall, the wood grooves of the opposing door do not speak, silent and still within the pouring night. Mokuba hadn’t inherited the same gene that keeps his brother up until sunrise. How wonderful to not have to deal with two of them.

The stairs do not breathe below his steps, and he neither for uncertainty as to the mess that should await him.

Finding it proves his wording perfected. Mess.

He’s alerted to Kaiba’s presence at the dining room table by sound first, sound that he’s certain has had hardly a reprieve the last hours gone. Quiet melodies and thumb pad presses. Across the table’s glass, as he approaches in cautious wincing steps, papers spread as though a covering cloth, all drawled with pencil sketches and illegible musings. Above it all, Kaiba looms in a hunch forward, a king over his castle of mania, focus never leaving the flashing colors of the screen an inch from his eyes.

Yuugi lifts a coffee mug by its top to rest on a blank corner of paper beside it, sparing the exorbitant glass from the ring of black brew sloshed over the edges. “...Hey,” comes with it, scanning up and down the bend of Kaiba’s frame and ignoring the pair of cards on the table he recognizes for their credit and debit. A nibble eats his inner lip. “How’s it going?”

Silence permeates from them a long while. Then, all at once, he’s resurrected as his fingers halt their motions, breath rested bated until the moment  _FULL COMBO_ glisters afront.

“ _Excellent_ ,” answers, or says, Kaiba in barely an exhale, and Yuugi is stunned to watch the phone be set down on the table, hands left free to instead lift one of the dozens of sheets scattering the glass.

Like a child presenting refrigerator-worthy work, Kaiba thrusts the paper forward for Yuugi’s scrutiny, who blinks a set of times before gazing over the sketches.

“Duel Monsters Live,” is all Kaiba says. Across the paper, frantic scribbles form several differing rectangular pages, ones built of song performance and gacha and all else. Yuugi can mark the varied places where the pencil tip snapped.

“Uh...like...a Duel Monsters themed rhythm game..?” For all the mad scientist vibrancy, he certainly does not lack ideas. “That might be interesting… But what about Duel Links?”

“Duel Links can wait. This is a completely untapped market.” The drawing is traded for muted noises of tapping again. “It’s genius. If I’ve spent forty thousand yen in one night on _this_ game, then there’s no limit to what the idiots out there would pay to get their hands on a virtual copy of their favorite monster.”

“Forty...thousand..?” The pale of his face would perhaps find him fainted in another life.

Only briefly, the moment of waiting before a new round of gameplay begins, Kaiba settles his gaze upon him, shifts it neatly back forward. “The UR rates are very steep.”

Weakly, Yuugi surveys the scene ahead of him again, the papers and the dribbling coffee and the deep midnight hour, all building up to the pop of his jaw closed again and twist of direction straight back for the staircase.

Quiet melody. Rapid finger presses.

Right, yes, no, he hasn’t told anyone yet how he’s been spending his recent nights.

He has to wonder who in their goddamn right mind would understand it if he did.

Melody.


End file.
